Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

The introduction of Richard Wagner’s music dramas in Stockholm
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tical to that of Lindgren, and in a footnote the critic adds: “to our delight we
find that the critic in Aftonbladet shares this view.”
Critics writing in NDA and PIT expressed themselves in a similar way
as those writing in AB and StD. The NDA (B 12/4 1887) critic admitted that
many aspects of Wagner’s reform were justified, and their healthy influence
had given a beneficial impetus to the development of modern opera in many
countries. His objections concerned the more extreme consequences of
Wagner’s principles, which he claimed Wagner had applied in Die Meistersinger
with almost the same imperative strictness as in Tristan. In the last
act, however, he had made considerable concessions to a more lyrical style,
and gave the spectators a pleasant surprise in the form of a melodic and
euphonious quintet.
The PIT (A 5/4 1887) critic also wrote that concessions were made to
other tastes, “as there are many ensembles and choruses in existence”,
even if a large part of Die Meistersinger was composed in accordance with
Wagner’s reform ideas. Both NDA and PIT turned against the excessively
long passages in which infinite melody dominated the score.
Both NDA and PIT criticised the leitmotif technique. The NDA reviewer
paraphrased Lindgren’s leitmotif critique in Om Wagnerismen, and like
Lindgren referred to Emil Naumann’s comment that leitmotifs resemble
the signs that hang from the mouths of figures in naïve medieval paintings,
displaying their names. Furthermore, he felt that the score was so richly
crammed with leitmotifs that it was impossible to understand their connotations
without special guides. The PIT (A 5/4 1887) critic was of the
opinion that the leitmotifs were sometimes used in a strange way:
“[…] so for instance, when […] Beckmesser is approaching the table on
which Walther’s poem, which Sachs wrote down, lies. The melody heard
is the one Walther sung to this text, which Beckmesser had never heard,
nor would be able to hear. Thus, the leitmotif illustrates the object, not
the character. One rather expects an expression of the joy Beckmesser
feels when finding such a rarity as a song by Sachs.”
Wagner writes in Oper und Drama that the orchestral motifs should function
as an expression of the emotions and thoughts of the fictive characters
when they cannot or will not give expression to them in words (Wagner
1903, vol. IV, p. 200). In practice however, as Carl Dahlhaus points out, the
orchestra more often plays the role of an omniscient narrator.